Pitch The PM
EP.46 He Trained Bryce Young Before Anyone Knew the Name — Then Built the Fastest-Growing Independent Research Platform on Wall Street
I met Tim Arthurs, the second week when I joined Millennium and knew he was an “A” player. He still has notes from every time he called me on a stock. He’s a process guy. And it has led to his success. He founded Seaport Research Partners, which has become the fastest-growing independent equity research platform by attracting the top research analysts and empowering them with aligned incentives. Early in his career, he moonlighted as a QB coach for Heisman winner and #1 overall pick Bryce Young teaching him the importance of the right motion and process. “What have I learned from some of my biggest failures is keep getting up. You're bendable, you're not breakable” "You can't be a big man at night and a little man in the morning" We cover: The Bryce Young story — a Craigslist posting, a dad who lied about his kid's age, and six months of tennis balls and candy wrappers before he ever touched a football. It starts with good habits The MiFID II unlock: how unbundling and vote/rate-card transparency exposed what individual analysts are actually worth — and made an eat-what-you-kill platform possible for the first time The brutal math of the sell side: ~3,500 published analysts in North America, and two-thirds of coverage is "watered-down, check-the-box" — subsidized by banking and syndicate How Seaport recruits the top 1% of the 1%: never a recruiter, 550+ interviews, ~40 offers, 30+ conversions — the clients feed the talent The reference-check questions that actually work: "When did they make you money?" and "What's a 60-minute meeting with them worth?" — asked across 20-30 buy-siders until the trend is undeniable The 3-step analyst checklist: investment judgment (best call, worst call, the consensus view you think is wrong), research edge (what do you produce that clients can't get elsewhere — and what's proprietary in the process), and client franchise (your top 15 advocates who raise their hand no matter what) The salesperson hierarchy: good salespeople are concierge, great ones sell outcomes — "we get paid to anticipate, not analyze" — and the cream of the crop sell feelings: becoming an extension of the client's investment process "You can't be a big man at night and a little man in the morning" Why analysts leave the bulge: "Why do I get comped down 10-15% a year when my franchise wasn't down?" — and what they control at Seaport: coverage, distribution, pricing, input and output The three-stage distribution model: ~400-500 readership, top-100 tactical, top-40 opt-in Proof of concept: #1 global market-share gainer at some of the biggest wallets on the planet, 3 → 30+ analysts in five years, and only one analyst ever lost The next five years: the best 45 analysts in the U.S., replicating the model in Europe and Asia, and filling the void the bulge brackets left Triathlons, 1,440 minutes a day, and the 5% you owe yourself — plus the cause closest to home: the Epilepsy Foundation of Chicago and his daughter Athena _______________________________________________________________ This episode is powered by Fiscal.AI - Delivering Modern Financial Data Infrastructure Pitch The PM Episode Links: Doug Garber on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-garber-42aa508 Subscribe to our Substack for research updates and new high-conviction episodes from top PMs, and our Job Board: https://pitchthepm.substack.com/ Links: Tim Arthurs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothy-arthurs-06b3179/ Seaport Research Partners: https://seaportrp.com/ Seaport Global: https://seaportglobal.com/ Chicago Epilepsy Foundation: https://epilepsychicago.org/
